


That Other Guy

by Bay_Ronan_Kellner



Category: The Following
Genre: Missing Scene, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2519123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bay_Ronan_Kellner/pseuds/Bay_Ronan_Kellner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan and Joe clear the air on their way to meet the twins—and both men wonder what might have been. (Set during <i>Forgive</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Other Guy

Joe glanced over at the passenger seat and frowned. "Ryan, are you still with me?"

"Yeah." The response was part whispered and part groaned. "I'm 'kay."

Judging by the way he was huddled over there, turning green, probably not. "I'm going to pull over."

"No! We have to get to—oh God. Yeah, pull over. Just for a sec."

Joe angled the van toward the dirt that served as a shoulder to this God-forsaken road. He watched as Ryan opened the door and vomited whatever little had remained in his stomach. Lovely. Well, at least it wasn't all over the car. 

Joe turned away to reach under the chair—hadn't he seen a water bottle hiding there? Yes. He wrestled it out and passed it over to Ryan, who was leaning back against his seat again. Tellingly, he had left the door open.

"Thanks." Ryan opened the bottle and sipped from it. Then he leaned out and vomited again—how could there be anything left? The man was practically a skeleton.

At length Ryan shifted, leaning back in his seat yet again. This time he shut the door.

Joe watched him take another sip. "Ready?"

"Yeah." Ryan held the bottle out to him. "It'll probably taste like vomit."

Joe grinned as he accepted it. "I've drunk worse." He took a gulp and then passed it back. “We work well together, old friend. We always did, even at the very start of our relationship.”

“At the very start? What, you mean when you were supposedly helping me track down the serial killer?”

“Well, I admit the fact that I was the killer made things a bit awkward. But we have a common purpose now. We have to rescue our Claire.”

Ryan took another sip and then shook his head. "You should have been that other guy, Joe. The one you pretended to be."

“It wasn’t all pretend, but I take you point.” He paused, taking in the hard lines of Ryan’s face—lines he had long since memorized. “I can’t be that guy, Ryan. For me, the taking of a life . . .” he let his voice trail off. There was no point in explaining the particulars of his psyche to Ryan; Ryan already understood his needs to the extent that he was capable of comprehending them.

Joe mustered a half-smile for his old friend instead. “For your sake, Ryan, I too wish I could have been that guy.”

Ryan just snorted. Joe took that as a signal that the conversation was done, and started the van up. They still had a long way to drive.

~*~

They drove in silence for what seemed like interminable miles. To Joe’s surprise, it was Ryan who broke that silence. “Was it ever weird for you to drive on this side of the road?”

Joe spared him a startled glance. “Where did that come from? Are you concussed?”

Ryan shrugged. “Maybe. But I know everything about you—except for little details like that. Somehow—I don’t know. We never talked much about your time in England. But that’s where you learned to drive, right?”

“Yes, but I’ve been over here so long that I’m much more accustomed to our ways of doing things. I’m very much an American, you know.”

“Apart from the accent.”

“Yes, apart from that.” Joe grinned. “I can fake an American accent now and then, but I’ve never mastered one. I came over too late to consistently sound like a local. But that’s fitting, don’t you think?”

“Why? Because of the professor thing?”

“Well, yes, but I was thinking of the villain thing. All villains are supposed to have English accents. Isn’t that a rule somewhere?”

That surprised a laugh out of Ryan. “Yeah, I guess so. So do you have a local London accent?”

“Oh, my accent is much too posh to be narrowed down like that.”

That earned him another short laugh. Extraordinary. Perhaps he should try to rescue people with Ryan more often. Or was it the car accident and whatever injuries he had sustained that made him so loquacious? They hadn't spoken this easily to one another since back before Ryan knew that Joe was a killer. Back when Joe must have seemed like 'that other guy.'

“That’s a British thing, those posh accents,” Ryan said. “We don’t have the equivalent.”

“Yes, you do. Listen to yourself—you don’t sound like a stereotypical Brooklynite. You have your own neutral, educated way of speaking.”

“Huh. I suppose you’re right.”

With that, he lapsed back into silence. Joe opted not to push his friend. Not just now. So they drove several more miles—all without seeing another vehicle—before Ryan piped up once more.

“What happened back there, Joe? How did you get out of the cuffs? And how did we end up in this van?”

Damn. This was a much less promising line of conversation. “You, ah, don’t remember that?”

“No. But I want the truth.”

“Very well.” He took a deep breath. “One of my followers, in an effort to rescue me, stole this van and used it to drive us off the road. He damn near killed both of us. He released me and handed me his gun, expecting me to kill you. I killed him instead, dragged you out of the wrecked vehicle . . . and, well, here we are.”

Ryan’s face turned white, which was arguably an improvement over the shade of green he sported earlier. “I’m going to kill you, Joe,” he promised.

“Yes, you’ve made that intention painfully clear—though you should be thanking me at the moment. But I know the plan: kill me and then presumably marry Claire and raise my son.” He paused, thinking it over. “I really have made my peace with that. But tell me one thing, Ryan. When my son comes to you for answers, what will you tell him about me?”

~*~

Ryan wanted to ignore the question. But he couldn’t do that, so he shrugged instead. “I won’t have to tell him much, Joe. He already knows all about you. Jesus, look at the things he's seen for himself.”

“Oh, but he’ll still have questions.” Joe gave him a look—a weirdly gentle look—before turning back to the road. “Will he turn out like me? Is it genetic? Was there any good at all in his dad? Was it wrong for him to enjoy making s'mores with his dad?”

“I . . ." How the hell was he supposed to answer that? "It’s not genetic. Claire is already telling him that. And, look, all he needs to know is that his dad was a great teacher who was sick in a way that nobody can cure.” He paused. If he had any sense, he’d just stop there. But no—he had to say this. “And I’ll tell him that it was okay to enjoy some time with his dad. That there were moments when his dad could be an almost decent guy. And if he wasn’t so sick—maybe things would have been different.”

“That’s generous of you, Ryan. I’m touched.”

“Yeah, well, eventually I’ll have to explain that you would have been a narcissistic bastard no matter what.”

Joe laughed. “Probably true.”

“I mean it, though, Joe. You could have been someone else. Minus this—this mental illness of yours.”

“I could have been that other guy?”

Ryan shrugged again. “I guess.”

“And what if I had been? Take away my mental illness—my monomaniacal need to kill—and then what?”

“If the killer had been someone else?”

“Yes. Do you see us as BFFs?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Something like that.”

Joe kept his eyes on the road, but he cocked his head as if he were looking straight at Ryan. “Haven’t you ever wondered how that would have worked out? With us both loving Claire, I mean.”

“I—no! I wouldn’t have—Joe, Claire and I never did anything until after she got her divorce. And back then—look, I would never have let myself feel that way about her.”

“No, my friend.” Joe looked amused. “You would have fallen for her. And I wouldn’t have blamed you, because you would have fallen for me too, albeit in different way. I suspect we were always going to end up wrapped up in each other.”

“No. Not like that. You and I would have been friends, and everything would have stayed platonic between Claire and me.”

“Really? I see that other road quite differently. Claire and I would have both realized how you felt about her, and we would have either had to end the friendship, or, ah . . .” He shrugged as he let his voice trail off. 

End this conversation now. That’s what Ryan told himself. But he couldn’t stop his mouth from opening again. “Or what?”

“Well, Claire and I were both progressive, open minded professors; the three of us could have reached some sort of accommodation. It no doubt would have taken time, and it would not be without some excess drama, but—”

“Wait. You think you would have been okay with me sleeping with your wife? Joe, you were like a maniac when you first—”

“I just admitted that there would have been some drama. But once we got past that, there'd be a number of possibilities open to us all. Who knows? You and I might have even managed to overcome our distressingly heterosexual natures. Claire would have found that most intriguing, I suspect.”

“No!” Ryan’s stomach churned. “If you think that you, me and Claire were going to be like Emma, Jacob and Paul—no.”

Joe raised his eyebrows. “Were they a threesome?”

Ryan gave him a look.

“Oh, you would know better than I would,” Joe assured him. “Emma doesn’t like to speak about it—whatever was going on between the three of them had unraveled by the time I reunited with her.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure they were a threesome. And I’m pretty sure it didn’t work out for them.”

“Apparently not. But, remember, we’re imagining a me without this mental illness of mine, so perhaps the three of us would have been in a better place than that trio. Maybe we could have made it work.”

“Yeah?" Damn Joe. He could make anything sound plausible. "And how would you have explained that to Joey?”

Joe bit down on his lip. “That’s a very good question. I suppose we would have kept the exact nature of our relationship with you hidden for as long as we could, but eventually he would have realized—and hopefully have accepted—that there were certain intimacies allowed between his mother and father and Uncle Ryan.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.” Although, if Ryan wanted to be fair—which he didn't—it would have been easier to explain that situation to the kid than that his father was a serial killer.

“No? Well, perhaps not. I doubt it will ever become an issue.”

“I can guarantee you that it won’t.”

Joe grinned and then glanced over at him. “You’re looking better—and sounding a lot more like yourself. How do you feel?”

“Okay." Were they really going to manage a normal conversation now? "Just banged up a little. And tired.”

“Good. Why don't you get some sleep? I’ll wake you up often enough to make sure you’re all right.”

Ryan stiffened. “No, I’m good. I can stay up.”

Joe let out an exasperated sigh. “Ryan, you know I don’t want to kill you. And you know we have to work together for Claire’s sake. So will you please trust me? At least for right now?”

 _I will never trust you_ —that’s what Ryan wanted to say. That’s what he knew he should say. But he did trust Joe . . . in this one specific situation. “Fine.” Ryan leaned back and closed his eyes. “But don’t think this changes anything.”

Joe didn’t answer—but Ryan knew he was smiling again. Ryan smiled a little too, if only because the whole situation was so screwed up. And then he let himself drift off. 

And somehow, though this wasn't saying much, it was the best sleep he’d had in weeks. 

 

-The End-


End file.
